Abstract- The objective of this essay is to investigate how cities have emerged as key sites for

analyzing the conflicting manifestations of global and local dynamics. Understanding the
significant role local settings play in a networked economy and society, has been a key area of
focus of the study. The essay reinforces that concept such as that of the “global city”,
“information city”, and “transnational city” assists in understanding the rapid globalization and
urban transformations taking place as a result of the interplay between the global and the local
forces, in shaping the cities.

Keywords: - Networked Economy, Global City, Information City and Transformation City.

“The key spatial feature of the networked society is the networked connection between the local
and the global.” – Manual Castells

Introduction

Globalization is the defining theme of the current epoch. There are always specific circumstances
that support the functioning of the global economy at distinct junctures in history. Today,
technology and development are the two fundamental aspects that work towards redefining the
already existing boundaries in the modern world. Globalization, as contended by Dicken (2004),
is “intrinsically spatial”. We must take into account how space, location, and time are structured
and rearranged as a result of modern developments in technological, economic, and political
practices, if we are to understand globalization as a process. According to Taylor et al. (2002),
the fact that all globalization processes include spatial elements is the reason why geography and
globalization are so closely intertwined. The social, cultural and political are the core processes
of any economy that help in shaping and reshaping of the “global map”. To put in Dicken’s
words, these have increasingly become transnational overtime.

As a result, cities, with the advent of globalization, cater as channels through which local,
national, and international processes and forces collide and combine to forge a new politics of
place-making in the context of a globalizing capitalism. Transnational corporations (TNCs),
businesses that have moved outside of their home nations and established command and control
activities in numerous locations, are one type of influential force propelling these trends. For
instance, the origin of McDonalds indicates that the term "McDonaldization model" describes the
ideas that the McDonald's restaurant chain has been able to effectively integrate into the global
economic system. The McDonald model is a success because it is effective at managing labour
costs and consumer demand. It is also quick, affordable, predictable, and efficient.

However, important discussions about the spatial organization of economic activity have been
sparked by globalisation movements by various scholars. One such important work is of The
Spatial Division of Labour (Massey, 1984) which talks about the “geographical selection” of the
labour process and how it was feasible to observe enterprises splitting up the production process
into skilled and unskilled tasks on both a national and worldwide scale. The concept of "spaces
of flows" that is stated to exist in the modern "network society," where spatial
interconnectedness is at the core of economic activity, effectively captures the effect of this
(Castells 2000). In short, it can be said that the cities are becoming increasingly permeable to
global forces, but at the same time it becomes important to note that the national and local
players are actively interested in and taking the initiative to restructure their cities as places that
can compete worldwide.

Drawing from Castells’ theory of the “network society”, the following article, attempts to view
the emergence of the city as a crucial location for studying the dichotomous and changing
expressions of global and local processes. The following section will look at one of the important
approaches of a leading theorist Saskia Sassen in order to encapsulate a framework for
understanding globalization and the creation of global cities from an actor-oriented perspective.

Global City Approach

Saskia Sassen, who created the "global city" and "global city-region" conceptual frameworks to
capture the fundamental core of the globalization process, invented the term "global city" to
describe one of the many techniques used to examine the strategic role of cities in the process of
globalization. Global cities are extremely divided, and their politics are tangled up in the
challenge of reconciling the widening gap between the citizens' "living space" and the needs of
the "economic space" of capital on the one hand, and the demands of the transnational elite on
the other (Friedmann, 1982). Sassen's theory of the global city places a strong emphasis on the
movement of capital and information as she notes, “The current stage of the global economy is
defined by the rise of information technology, greater mobility, and capital liquidity.” (Sassen,
2005). These international processes connect many economies and cultures, furthermore they are
also in charge of the development of geographical inequalities and social and economic divides.

However, Sassen’s thesis states that even in the face of economic globalization and the
digitalization of society, the importance of cities did not diminish. It is so because specific
technologies and services developed in certain locations enable the global finance to regulate and
organize capital flows, production, trade, and marketing on a global scale and at an increasing
rate. As a result, there is this interplay of simultaneous spatial concentration and diffusion, which
is one of the essential components of the organizational structure of the global economic system.
For instance, a "controlled informal market" called Dilli Haat provides an apt example of the
regulating dynamics of informal marketplaces in New Delhi. The market's location, which
features a variety of arts and crafts from several Indian regions, gives off a rural and traditional
touch. Due to its environment, which includes the grandeur, commodities being sold in booths,
and merchants selling goods on the sidewalk, it presents an informal viewpoint. It has developed
into a popular tourist destination over time, which is great for the sellers. In short, Dilli Haat
displays artwork that would ordinarily only be available at rural or neighborhood markets in a
populated region. With the market's diversity, it is very appealing to foreign visitors who may
experience and learn about various Indian cultures in one location. Thus, in Manual Castells
words, different networks that are connected in numerous locations are integrated into the “space
of flows”. Places are viewed as areas made up of flows and locations, whose structure and
quality of performance affect how long-distance networks and far-off locations are organized.
On the other hand, at the local level, the spheres of influence of various networks change the way
a city is organized, where its residents live, and how it uses its space. In short, instead of being
viewed as separate interaction processes, places and networks should be seen as types of spatial
arrangement that are inherently co-produced.

However, Sassen notes that despite the involvement of smaller businesses and industrial
freelancers from rural areas, TNCs nonetheless maintain control over the finished product and
benefit from its sales on the global market. Smaller markets have grown as a result of the
internationalization and expansion of the financial sector, but the top-level influence is still
mostly confined to a few major cities. So, the concentration of central functions in a small
number of locations, or the global cities, increases as the economy gets more international.
According to her, operations that were a component of the industry have been moved to services
rather than being eliminated by modern technology. Additionally, she contends that the
functional specialization of early factories, known as the assembly line, is present in its modern
equivalent, the "global assembly line," where the manufacturing and assembly of goods have
been distributed among factories around the world in order to reduce labour costs. Such an
outsourcing of economic activities has led the rise of new forms of “management”, “control” and
“planning”.

The key area of this global city approach as advocated by Sassen is to investigate how the power
that global cities wield over the production of the services necessary for the stability of the global
economy is influencing their development and significance. As a result, Sassen advises looking
at production sites and market centres instead. This highlights the fact that many resources
required for global economic activity are not “hypermobile” but rather are strongly ingrained in
places, such as the regions of large cities (Sassen 2005, p.31) For instance, one can look at
Jamshedpur as "mini-Mumbai" because of its cosmopolitan culture, flourishing business and
industries. The city of Jamshedpur is the first planned industrial city which is able to generate
workable answers to current issues related to globalization by adopting the Melbourne Model, a
new methodology. The city is able to benefit from the UN's global influence and from the
sharing of best practices and knowledge.

Thus, drawing upon this the following section will now look upon the co-production of the
global and the local networks by tracing the significantly increasing class of high-earning
workers such as the bankers, brokers, etc. who do not own the major firms they work for but
rather are a part of the new international work culture. They are hard workers who abuse
themselves by working long hours and are the drivers of the city's production and supply. It will
also shed some light on how these significant global city sectors have an excessive concentration
of jobs with very high and very low incomes which have resulted in significant class
realignments and adjustments to the institutional structure of labor. In many places, a system that
offered workers some degree of job stability, health insurance, and social benefits has also been
dismantled.

The Co-Production of the Global and the Local Networks

As rightly pointed out by Castells, networks are what give cities their existence, and the
peculiarities of the urban environment influence how these networks evolve. He states that "they
are not global cities, but global networks that structure and change specific areas of some cities
through their connections” (Castells 2010). In the global regions, there are many cross-border
networks that operate in a variety of fields, including politics, culture, society, and economic
spheres. In other words, all global cities, whether or not they are referred to as "global" cities,
can be thought of as a confluence of interconnected units that are both “globalized” and
“localized”. The economic, social, political, and cultural networks that underpin the organization
of cities, their size and topography, their structure and functions, as well as their growth over
time, are therefore, directly related to this local-global positioning (Pflieger et.al, 2010).

With respect to this global- local duality, different studies have been carried out by different
scholars Celine Rozenblat contends that micro networks are the processes that create the
economies of urban agglomeration. As a result, she emphasises how cities' internal networks
help to increase their prominence in international networks. Similar views have been shared by
other scholars like Lisa Bjorkman in her study of Bombay Brokers, wherein with a primary focus
on brokers she underlines the crucial part these movers of the city play in the operation of
Mumbai, one of the most intricate, dynamic, and populated cities in the world, and their
expertise and labour in the background are frequently unseen.

She attempts to highlight how the brokers exist as “intermediary figures” and even though it was
believed that overtime these “agentive” brokers were out of existence, she points out that due to
unstable connections between the states and markets, bodies and territory, identities and
nationalities, Mumbai has been witnessing a “return of the broker” (Bjorkman 2021, p. 7).
While Sassen attempts to draw a connection in a broader framework, Lisa’s study is more
focused at the informal sector and how they are significant in establishing this networked
society. According to her, brokers and brokerage is an invitation to investigate areas of action
outside of wealthy and affluent categories where power and authority are “theorized and
institutionalized”.

In doing so, she looks at brokerage within two domains, that is, political brokerage and economic
brokerage. The political brokerage entails the practices of “corruption” whereas the economic
brokerage deals with “value” in terms of the fees paid to the broker. She says the practices of
corruption are usually witnessed more in developing economies than in the developed ones since
in the latter, "specialized intermediates" supply services including market intelligence, a legal
system that will uphold contract laws, and an open regulatory environment. The developing
economies on the other hand have “informal intermediaries” who deal in corrupted products,
charge unpayable interest rates on loans, and take advantage of informational and power
imbalances for their own financial gain (Bjorkman 2021, p. 10). She gives an ethnographic
example of Rasheed a tea shop owner in Mumbai whose story reveals how the matters of
“legality”, “illegality”, “formality” and “informality” in order to get a license for his shop did not
just involve exchanges in terms of money to the police in terms of “hafta” in order to expand his
business but also cordial relationships with other people such as his own constable friends who
helped him file his case for the license. Similar instance could be seen in the case of Imran Khan,
a builder in Shivajinagar, with the help of his relationships produced "chajjas" in the
neighborhood that imitated Berlin-inspired embellishments. The designs demonstrated how the
internet helps ideas spread quickly, and how contractors are now capable of meeting the client's
desire for emotive and distinctive décor that emphasise a "happy life." In terms of design, this
has also led to an expansion and intensification of competition in the professional market for
contractors. Moreover, in order to meet the housing needs of the growing population, the author
mentions what Imran Khan calls the “symbolic wall” which is destroyed by the municipal
authorities if the building constructed is beyond 14 foot keeping in mind that the actual
construction remains intact. In other words, a demolition like this one that is followed by a
monetary payment to the local government constitutes manipulation. So, these procedures not
only aid in the construction of structures but also alter urban design, making it more "colourful."

However, another facet of this intermeshed nature of global and the local has been highlighted by
Meghana Eswar and Sunil D. Santha in their study of Peri urbanization and Livelihood
Practices: Exploring Everyday Life and Social Inequities in a Changing Agrarian Economy. The
objective of their study is to look at how Urbanization, a global phenomenon, interacts with rural
areas outside of cities by influencing the land, labour, and agricultural markets, which in turn
affects how different people make a living. The following ethnographic study has been
conducted in the global city Bangalore wherein the development of IT companies stimulated
related industries including housing, education, hotels, transportation, and recreation, all of
which grew in the periphery and had an impact on the region's labour, land, and agricultural
practices (Eswar & Santha, 2020, p.6). Fewer farmers are now planting commercial crops like
vegetables, flowers, and turf to supply the IT businesses and schools that have popped up nearby
as a result of people shifting into non-agriculture occupations after 1990 and land being
converted to urban usage after 2000. As a result, farm markets have changed from having
significant agricultural linkages with metropolitan areas to ones that are limited to local areas.

In addition, dairying has become a substantial addition to the village's everyday economy as a
result of serving the demands of a peri urban area that is expanding. Dairy cooperatives are
crucial in allowing farmers to sell their dairy products in urban markets (Eswar & Santha 2020,
p.9). The dairy producers are also wary of the external influences that can prevent them from
taking use of their newly discovered economic potential. There is opposition to opening up the
milk market to the global market despite the fact that they have a reliable network, such as the
dairy cooperative, that connects the rural and urban markets and also offers stable milk prices.
Thus, it can be said then that the global - local forces function in a way that deepens social and
economic inequality in the nearby village outskirts of the city.

Conclusion

The "global city" approach has been crucial in creating a framework for comprehending how
cities and globalization interact. It provided a strong conceptual framework to postulate how the
dynamics of the globalizing world economy, emerging global urban hierarchies, and spatial and
socioeconomic developments in cities interact. This approach has been essential as it addressed
the shifting global environment of urban processes, but it ignored national/local initiatives,
programmes, and politics of local and national players who were at the same time trying to build
global networks and alter their cities. According to the thesis of this article, national and local
actors as well as global actors are all involved in and responsible for the political, economic, and
social globalization of cities. In other words, placing the periphery at the centre allows one to
examine how this region's economies have changed in relation to those of other regions and how
the diverse populations living there interact with these changes by interacting with state and
social institutions. This helps one to understand how global processes such as urbanisation are
embedded in the peripheries.